News, nature, and community throughout the Emerald Triangle

Sad Stories Coming from Japan and Radiation Information

A story of 30 children waiting in silent classrooms for parents to come pick them up. This one might be too much. I’m still struggling to deal with the images. There are other sad stories there, too. Read more here. The photo above came from this site.

Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri cried as he left a conference to brief journalists on the situation at Fukushima, a senior Japanese minister also admitted that the country was overwhelmed by the scale of the tsunami and nuclear crisis. He said officials should have admitted earlier how serious the radiation leaks were.

Union of Concerned Scientists say, “The people of Japan should be given priority access to potassium iodide (KI) pills used to protect against thyroid cancer following inhalation of radioactive iodine, according to a recommendation released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Given the fact that Japan is thousands of miles from the United States, it is highly unlikely that Americans would be exposed to radioactive iodine from direct inhalation of a plume from the Fukushima nuclear complex.” Read more including information about possible contamination of dairy milk here.

This radiation map by a private company updates frequently here. Note levels on west coast MUCH lower than in Colorado which has yet to receive any fallout.

“We have thrown everything except the kitchen sink at this reactor, and have failed. ”

“The time has come to throw in the kitchen sink.”

Famous physicist Michio Kaku tells CNN that the Japanese govenment should be acting now to prepare for the “Chernobyl option” of “entombment,” where the air force is called in to drop massive amounts of sand, boron, dolomite and concrete to bury the reactors.

Kaku says it would take several days to prepare for that operation and then several more days to complete it, but that the Japanese government and military should be preparing for it right now, so that they will be ready to put that plan into action quickly if need be.

It sounds like Kaku thinks it is very likely that this approach may be needed, and he’s concerned that an unwillingness on the part of non-scientist in the government to face up to the seriousness of the situation may be getting in the way.

On Democracy Now today, they were talking about areas as much as 100 miles downwind from Chernobyl that are still uninhabitable today.

But the Chernobyl disaster involved a massive explosion and an intense fire that was releasing radiation into the atmosphere at a very high rate for a number of days before the “entombment” was complete. The radioactivity released at the Japanese reactors has not been anywhere near the same level…at least not yet. But apparently the potential exists for this thing to end with a radioactive release that is at or even beyond the Chernobyl level.

If I understand Michio Kaku correctly, I think what he’s saying is, let’s not wait until a massive radiation release is already underway — why not get ready to start entombment now, since the whole facility is a total loss anyway?

Or at least let’s get the materials and manpower ready to be prepared to go start the entombment process on short notice, rather than waiting around in the hopes that things get better, and then being caught flat-footed if things get worse fast.

“We have thrown everything except the kitchen sink at this reactor, and have failed. ”

“The time has come to throw in the kitchen sink.”

Famous physicist Michio Kaku tells CNN that the Japanese govenment should be acting now to prepare for the “Chernobyl option” of “entombment,” where the air force is called in to drop massive amounts of sand, boron, dolomite and concrete to bury the reactors.

Kaku says it would take several days to prepare for that operation and then several more days to complete it, but that the Japanese government and military should be preparing for it right now, so that they will be ready to put that plan into action quickly if need be.

It sounds like Kaku thinks it is very likely that this approach may be needed, and he’s concerned that an unwillingness on the part of non-scientist in the government to face up to the seriousness of the situation may be getting in the way.

On Democracy Now today, they were talking about areas as much as 100 miles downwind from Chernobyl that are still uninhabitable today.

But the Chernobyl disaster involved a massive explosion and an intense fire that was releasing radiation into the atmosphere at a very high rate for a number of days before the “entombment” was complete. The radioactivity released at the Japanese reactors has not been anywhere near the same level…at least not yet. But apparently the potential exists for this thing to end with a radioactive release that is at or even beyond the Chernobyl level.

If I understand Michio Kaku correctly, I think what he’s saying is, let’s not wait until a massive radiation release is already underway — why not get ready to start entombment now, since the whole facility is a total loss anyway?

Or at least let’s get the materials and manpower ready to be prepared to go start the entombment process on short notice, rather than waiting around in the hopes that things get better, and then being caught flat-footed if things get worse fast.

To be fair to the Japanese government, it may be that they are already preparing for this, I don’t know. And of course it’s another massive use of manpower and resources in a nation that is already strained to the breaking point with the need to respond to the massive devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami.

To be fair to the Japanese government, it may be that they are already preparing for this, I don’t know. And of course it’s another massive use of manpower and resources in a nation that is already strained to the breaking point with the need to respond to the massive devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami.